Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire: Colonial Relations, Humanitarian Discourses, and the Imperial Press

Abstract

While New Zealand historians have sometimes been influenced by the new imperial history, this increasing body of work focusing on empire in its international and comparative dimensions has remained on the periphery of the country’s historical imagination. This is even true in the study of nineteenth-century colonialism. Despite the central role of humanitarianism in New Zealand history, many historians have been more concerned with exploring Māori history in increasingly local settings than considering the broader pattern of imperial relationships. Tony Ballantyne’s work is a leading exception, and a number of legal historians have explored issues of Aboriginal title, while sharing a limited subset of the concerns explored by the new imperial history.